Antipsychotic drugs may cause heart muscle disease

Myocarditis and cardiomyopathy are associated with the antipsychotics clozapine, chlorpromazine, lithium, fluphenazine, respiridone, and haloperidol, but it is not clear whether this link is causal. Coulter et al (p 1207) performed a data mining exercise, using bayesian statistics, on the WHO database for international drug monitoring, which covers 60 countries. Although myocarditis and cardiomyopathy accounted for less than 0.1% of the 2.5 million reports, clozapine, in particular, was statistically associated with these adverse effects. Data mining can be useful in pharmacovigilance.


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Relevant Article

Antipsychotic drugs and heart muscle disorder in international pharmacovigilance: data mining study
David M Coulter, Andrew Bate, Ronald H B Meyboom, Marie Lindquist, and I Ralph Edwards
BMJ 2001 322: 1207-1209. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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